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Despite a decline in Uganda’s fertility rate from 5.4 to 5.2, more currently married women aged between 15 and 49 years in Uganda would want to have more children.

The recently released Uganda Demographic Health Survey (UDHS) Report 2022 says men, too, in the same age bracket would want to have more children although their proportion (30 percent) is much less than women (35 percent).

The report says the proportion of currently married women who want "no more children" (including women who are sterilised) decreased from 41% in 2006 to 35% in 2022 while among men it decreased from 30% in 2006 to 29% in 2016.

Interestingly, however, the report says this trend for men changed, with the proportion of men desiring to have more children increasing from 29 percent to 30 percent in 2022.

Men’s ideal family stands at 5.8 children as compared with five children among women, the report adds.

“If women could choose their family size, they would prefer to have five children on average,” the report reads.

Ideal family size is slightly higher among women and men who are currently married (5.3 for women versus 6.5 for men), According to the report.

The latest revelation comes as a surprise considering that the country's fertility rate has been dropping and was reported last year to have decreased from 5.4 children in 2016 to 5.2 children in 2022.

Speaking at an event to launch the preliminary findings of the UDHS report in September last year, health minister Jane Ruth Aceng hailed the drop in fertility rate, noting that while of little statistical significance, it brings some promise for taming Uganda’s fast-rising population growth which is now believed to be at 46 million.

She said effort must be made to bring the figures down further if Uganda’s health indicators such as infant mortality are to improve.

Reducing population growth through cutting fertility rates is beneficial to the economy as low fertility increases the number of people of working age per capita as well as output per capita according to the United Nations. 

“For us to have a significant improvement in fertility, we need strong political will. The political voices need to come and speak. The truth is a high fertility rate is breaking us; having 1.6 million born every year, we have a huge burden,” she said last year.